The following is the opinion and analysis of the writers:
Rick Rappaport
Barbara Liguori
Not sure what got into the ACC on Dec. 3, 2025, when they voted 5-0 to slash APS’s energy efficiency programs budget by over 50%. To gut ongoing programs that had produced over 2 billion dollars in net savings from 2010-2020 (that’s a path of one dollar bills to just about the Moon) would on its face seem to be a complete dereliction of its constitutional duty. No other way to describe this. The framers spent a lot of time on the ACC to ensure it would be powerful enough to fight against the big utilities of the day. They gave it superpowers, but only to be used to serve and protect the “public interest.” Decimating programs that save the public boatloads of money makes no sense at all.
There are only two ways that any utility can keep your lights on. One, pay for energy efficiency that reduces their electrical load so they can safely maintain the grid. Two, build more power plants and transmission infrastructure to meet any rising demand. That’s it. Become more energy efficient or build more capacity. According to the world's foremost authority on energy efficiency, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories — decades of experience and a Nobel prize — the cost per kilowatt hour (kWh) for efficiency programs is about 3.4 cents. That's for all ratepayers, not just the ones in those programs. Right now, you're paying about 15 cents per kWh. Energy efficiency is about 450% cheaper. Not a fair fight. The EPA says this about energy efficiency: “One of the fastest, most effective ways to save money, reduce greenhouse gas emissions as well as other pollutants, as well as decrease water use ... Improving energy efficiency can lower individual utility bills, create jobs, and help stabilize electricity prices and volatility.”
Now, for a rapidly overheating and water-resource-depleting Arizona, that sounds like just the ticket. And from 2010-25, those energy efficiency programs delivered and delivered and delivered.
Despite this overwhelming evidence of the value of energy efficiency programs and of the APS programs in particular, Thompson boasted about his $51 million of line item cuts as he called them out by name, sarcasm practically dripping from his every word while he played to his fellow commissioners, who mostly snickered and nodded. “What's in a name?” Plenty, according to Thompson. If the name sounds suspicious, then off with its head! And if it walks like a duck ... shoot it.
And so, disregarding his own ACC staff recommendations to leave those programs alone and the remarkable money savings resulting from those mandated programs, Thompson demolished them. For the most powerful agency in Arizona, charged with serving the ratepayer, it was a failure of epic proportions. To hear Thompson claim the moral high ground as some kind of Everyman champion for ratepayers as he preened about his line item “savings” was gut-wrenching. His own staff had concluded — line item by line item-- that those cuts would have saved much more than they cost.
That is what energy efficiency does. It is the cheapest way to save electricity, full stop.
One program Thompson singled out — making it sound like it egregiously misspent ratepayer dollars — was for replacing gasoline-powered golf carts with electric ones. You’re thinking like Thompson implied that it must be only for some posh private golf club members. Wrong! That particular program specifically listed the beneficiaries as schools, dormitories, and other multifamily properties where such carts make sense to be used. This was not some $1,000 Navy toilet seat scandal. This means something. All those cuts mean something. ACC staff had studied the docket and concluded the energy efficiency programs were more than worth keeping. I’m afraid Thompson is anything but the energy expert he claimed to be in 2022, “Consider us your … experts on energy-related matters.” Well, maybe — if you count as energy the hot air he's selling to the public as cost savings. He burned down the entire house to get rid of a few bugs.
Cutting these energy efficiency programs was abysmally short-sighted. Instead of paying with their wallet, ratepayers will now be paying through the nose.
